No, the story we are about to tell you did not come out of a novel by Jules Verne: in 1897 there really was a Arctic hot air balloon expedition to the North Poleand it was ruinous from start to finish for several reasons. The hydrogen balloon and those on board, in fact, crashed on the Arctic shelf, and for 33 years no one knew where they ended up, until August 1930 the aviator and journalist of Corriere della Sera Vittorio Beonio Brocchieri he discovered the remains of their camp and five precious rolls of film which documented the two months of extreme survival of the unfortunate expedition.
The idea came from the very ambitious – and also a little crazy – Swedish engineer Salomon Andréewho with his two traveling companions Nils Strindberg And Knut Frænkel they left the coast of Danes Island, Norway, never to return to their homeland.
Salomon Andrée and the idea of hot air balloon
Salomon Andrée was not exactly what you would call “an ordinary man”. In addition to being a mechanical engineer, physicist and explorer, he was also a custodian: shortly after graduating from engineering school he landed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, and there he worked as custodian of the Swedish pavilion. Just then he met the American aeronaut John Wiseand with him his great passion for hot air balloons.
At the age of 43, in 1878, he returned to Sweden, but not before taking a trip to Paris, a center of excellence for the construction of hot air balloons. He bought it there his first hot air balloon, Sveaon which he conducted various experiments that would be fundamental for his future.
At the time, it was Norway (politically under Sweden) that held the reins of Arctic exploration, and the Swedish government and scientific elite wanted to oust the neighboring country and get to the Arctic podium quickly, considering themselves the most important and central of the Scandinavian nations. Andrée emerged immediately in that context, standing out in the eyes of geographers, meteorologists and engineers alike 1895 lecture at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences with the project of an exploratory hot air balloon mission in the Arctic territories.
Andrée convinced the men in front of him that the French hydrogen balloons were of advanced reliability and the most hermetic in Europeand he did not fail to mention that some of them had remained filled with hydrogen for over a year without an appreciable loss of buoyancy. About thehydrogenHowever, filling the balloon at the take-off point would have been simple with the help of mobile gas production units. And then, the possibility of directing the balloon was guaranteed by his experiments with the drag ropes used on the Svea, which would have guaranteed an angle to the wind of 27°.
Finally, the engineer reassured everyone that summer would be the best time to begin that exploration, because the midnight sun (the typical phenomenon of the polar regions where the summer sun remains visible 24 hours a day) would have granted visibility throughout the day, halving the time required for the flight and avoiding the problem of anchoring during the night.
Andrée assured that if rain or snow fell on the balloon the precipitation would melt at temperatures above 0 °C and would be blown away below 0 °C, since the balloon traveled slower than the wind and therefore there would be no obstacle to his journey in a hot air balloon.
Incredibly (or perhaps not even too much), he managed to convince the audience, who approved the cost estimate 130,800 crowns (around 750,000 euros currently). The King Oscar II he was so happy with the news that he financed the project with 30,000 crowns, and even Alfred Nobelthe dynamite magnate and founder of the Nobel Prize, sent money to Andrée, anxious about his ascent to the heavens.
However, none of them knew how severe the summer storms were in that remote and very white corner of the Earth, and even fewer knew about the high humidity and fogs in those areas. But now the project had started, andJuly 11, 1897 Andrée and his two compatriots Nils Strindberg And Knut Frænkel they left aboard the hot air balloon Ornen (the Eagle), which had been manufactured in Paris.
The departure of the hot air balloon and the inexorable fall
Until the end, the engineer stated with conviction that the balloon would survive the harsh Arctic temperatures, and that the vehicle would be maneuvered and controlled with long ropes that would be dragged across the ice.
The Eagle (which weighed about 3 tons) had left a few minutes ago, but they lost two of the three guide ropes – which weighed half a ton each – and ended up much higher than it should have. At that height the seams of the canvas froze and the hot air balloon began to leak gas. Seeing such a situation, any sensible engineer would have decided to land as soon as possible and cancel the shipment. Unfortunately Andrée was extremely stubborn, and with the pressure of the Swedish people all on him he decided to continue anyway (despite knowing full well that the flight now had no chance of success), condemning the entire team to the fate they would face.
In total they managed to fly for just over 10 hours, then followed more than 40 hours of ascents and descents before the hot air balloon, weighed down by humidity, completely drifted and crashed into the Arctic ice. Miraculously, however, the three explorers had escaped unscathed. If wireless radio had already existed they could have called the base, but unfortunately they were alone in the middle of the North Pole, and before their eyes there was only a picturesque expanse of ice with a hot air balloon lying on its side in the center.
Two months in the ice
In short, all that remained for the three explorers was to load everything possible onto the sleds and go southin the hope that someone would find them before they froze to death (the clothing was not exactly appropriate for that situation, as you can imagine).
Despite the unfortunate situation, they managed to get considerably far: for two months they managed to survive thanks to some objects on board (tent, snowshoes, skis, fishing tools and so on) and to the enormous supplies of food they had with them thanks to the sponsors, who had even donated champagne and beer. But this wealth was also one ballastand soon they left behind the crates with the less essential contents and all the equipment that unnecessarily overloaded the sleds. To survive they preferred to devote themselves to seal hunting and other polar animals.
At a certain point, the cold was such that the three built a sort of little house on the ice floe with all the materials they had available, but which lasted a few days because the ice underneath began to break and they had to continue, arriving at the small Kvitøya island. By now the cold and tiredness had become unbearable, and they froze to death.
But how come we know all these details? Thanks to the “visual diary” by the on-board photographer, Strindberg, who had used his cartographic camera (it was supposed to be used to map the Arctic region from above) to document their days in that expanse of white as far as the eye could see. But not only thanks to the photographs, because all three cared a personal diary. Strindberg noted details with a more personal and profound perspective, while Andrée and Frænkel were colder and more precise, and recorded their geographical movements.
In the last pages of the travel diary Andrée indulged in a very personal thought, and of his companions he wrote:
With companions like the ones I have you should be able to get by in, I would say, any circumstances.
1930: an Italian finds the remains of the expedition
For good 33 years old no one knew what had happened to the explorers, because no one had managed to track them down, fueling a veil of mystery and various urban legends about what had happened to them.
Their remains were found many years later by the Italian journalist and expert aviator Vittorio Beonio Brocchieriwho at the time was writing about reports from many parts of the world for the Corriere della Serathanks to his travels with the Caproni Ca.100 biplane.
In 1930 Brocchieri left for Norway to report on the rescue attempt of Roald Amundsenthe airman lost while trying to rescue Umberto Nobile and the crew of airship Italywhich left Rome-Ciampino airport on 19 March 1928 for a scientific expedition to the North Pole and was then shipwrecked there (nothing was ever known about the six men who were on board, and the tragedy put an end to the operational use of airships Italian military).
The August 28, 1930Brocchieri spotted human remains on the polar ice pack, which were not those of Amudsen given their conditions, but those of the three unfortunate explorers who had been wanted for thirty years. Before long their bodies were shipped to Stockholm for the public funeral, and their travel objects ended up in the country’s museums.
Today, the promontory where they landed and were found is known as Andréenesetwhere a concrete monument commemorates their feat.
One thing is certain about this chilling but adventurous story: Salamon Andrée was a man who he preferred death to failurebut sometimes you have to remember to get out of your dreamsbecause there is always time to start again.
